Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

On Constitutional Disobedience

By: Louis Michael Seidman
Narrated by: Winslow Thomas
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

What would the Framers of the Constitution make of multinational corporations? Nuclear weapons? Gay marriage? They led a preindustrial country, much of it dependent on slave labor, huddled on the Atlantic seaboard. The Founders saw society as essentially hierarchical, led naturally by landed gentry like themselves. Yet we still obey their commands, two centuries and one civil war later. According to Louis Michael Seidman, it's time to stop.

In On Constitutional Disobedience, Seidman argues that, in order to bring our basic law up to date, it needs benign neglect. This is a highly controversial assertion. The doctrine of "original intent" may be found on the far right, but the entire political spectrum - left and right - shares a deep reverence for the Constitution. And yet, Seidman reminds us, disobedience is the original intent of the Constitution. The Philadelphia convention had gathered to amend the Articles of Confederation, not toss them out and start afresh. The "living Constitution" school tries to bridge the gap between the framers and ourselves by reinterpreting the text in light of modern society's demands. But this attempt is doomed, Seidman argues.

One might stretch "due process of law" to protect an act of same-sex sodomy, yet a loyal-but-contemporary reading cannot erase the fact that the Constitution allows a candidate who lost the popular election to be seated as president. And that is only one of the gross violations of popular will enshrined in the document. Seidman systematically addresses and refutes the arguments in favor of Constitutional fealty, proposing instead that it be treated as inspiration, not a set of commands. The Constitution is, at its best, a piece of poetry to liberty and self-government. If we treat it as such, the author argues, we will make better progress in achieving both.

©2012 Oxford University Press (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
activate_samplebutton_t1

Listeners also enjoyed...

Law and Leviathan cover art
Is Democracy Possible Here? cover art
The Constitution cover art
Corruption in America cover art
The Necessity of Secularism cover art
Uncertain Justice cover art
Can It Happen Here? cover art
A Duty to Resist cover art
The Justice of Contradictions cover art
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 cover art
Liars cover art
The Conservatarian Manifesto cover art
Against Decolonization cover art
Against Democracy cover art
Nullification cover art
Why Tolerate Religion? cover art

What listeners say about On Constitutional Disobedience

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.